Remember that conversation from last night about how if we start deciding Zevran's too dangerous to let live then we needed to judge the other companions on their pasts and we'd quickly be forced to come to the conclusion that we were too dangerous to live as well and that Loghain was right? Well it inspired this.
“So what say you?” the elven assassin Zevran asked looking up at them curiously from his position on the ground.
Alistair glanced over at his fellow Warden, Angélique. Normally, he just let her handle the decision-making process because despite how…
special she was at least he didn’t have to do it and she hadn’t done anything too crazy as of yet. Still, the decision on what to do with the man who had just been hired by Loghain (and some other guy who couldn’t possibly be as evil as Loghain) to kill them was important enough that he felt they really should discuss it. “This is a bad idea,” he told her flatly. “How do we know that he won’t just try to kill us again?”
“I’m sure he won’t,” Angélique said with a trusting smile. “He did promise us that he wouldn’t, after all.”
“I can promise again, if you like,” Zevran offered.
“No, I still remember the first one,” Alistair said dryly. “I’m just not entirely sure that I trust it.”
“I think you’re being too hard on him,” Angélique declared.
Alistair stared at her. “You think that I’m
what? Do you not remember how just a half an hour ago he ambushed us and tried to kill us?”
“I remember just fine,” Angélique assured him. “But we really do need to give him a second chance.”
Alistair crossed his arms. “I was not aware that I ‘needed’ to give anybody anything of the sort,” he said stiffly.
“Oh, but you do,” Angélique told him, her violet eyes widening dramatically. “Otherwise we might as well admit that Loghain was right all along.”
Alistair nearly fell over. “Wait…what? How do you make the leap between killing an assassin that Loghain hired to kill us to cover up his own treachery and Loghain being right? Which, you know, he’s totally not.”
“Well, think about it,” Angélique said slowly. “Zevran’s really not all that different than you or I or any of the others that have come with us.”
“See? I’ll fit right in,” Zevran spoke up. Alistair glanced down to see that he’d evidently gotten bored of waiting for them to decide his fate and had started to play tic-tac-toe against himself. “And while I’ve never killed a darkspawn before I am certainly good at killing.”
“That makes me feel so much better about this, thank you,” Alistair muttered. “As per usual, Angélique, I have no idea what you’re talking about so maybe you could explain.”
“You said that Zevran tried to kill us and that that wasn’t very nice and I agree,” Angélique began.
“You must believe that I am simply wracked with guilt about that,” Zevran felt the need to announce.
Angélique, for some reason, seemed to believe him as she positively beamed. “Oh, I know. Thank you for telling me that.”
“What does this have to do with our other companions or the two of us?” Alistair asked pointedly, hoping that she’d get back on topic before they got even more sidetracked. “Particularly in regards to Loghain being right?”
“Oh, yes,” Angélique nodded her appreciation at the reminder. “Well, take Sten. He killed an entire family whose only crime was to not have gone around the battlefield collecting all of the weapons for when Sten woke up. That’s even less nice than trying to kill us because at least we can defend ourselves.”
“Yeah, one family,” Alistair countered. “That’s horrible, true, but think of how many innocent people Zevran has probably killed!”
“On the contrary, I am reasonably sure that most of them thoroughly deserved it,” Zevran murmured indolently. He had finished his game and was now looking for all the world like he was trying to take a nap.
“Sten is very sorry about what he did and I forgave him, of course, but it doesn’t change the past,” Angélique continued. “And he could always go crazy again and kill us all, especially if he loses his sword again and yet that’s a risk we’ve all accepted. We can’t really judge Zevran without judging Sten. Then, of course, there’s Leliana.”
“Leliana?” Alistair repeated, surprised. “I know she was a former bard but they did things besides killing and she said that was her last resort. Besides, all that’s behind her now.”
“So she
says,” Angélique pointed out. “And even if that’s true, being a bard required her to do a lot of very not nice things that, if we’re holding peoples’ pasts against them, must be taken into account. And then there’s her vision, of course. You can’t deny that you thought she was crazy when we first met.”
“Maybe,” Alistair admitted reluctantly. “So you think she’ll snap and try to kill us all as well?”
Angélique nodded. “She might. Maybe she’d have another dream and mistake it for a vision again. You can never be too careful.”
“I’m really starting to wonder if I really want to join you people after all,” Zevran mused aloud.
Alistair ignored him. “What about Morrigan? You can’t tell me that you really think Leliana’s a threat and not Morrigan.”
“Well of course Morrigan is a threat!” Angélique exclaimed. “She’s an apostate of questionable intentions. I mean, I know her mother told her to come with us but surely a grown woman like her could make her own choices. Oh, and she made us kill her mother as well. That doesn’t really strike me as the nicest thing to do no matter what her mother may have been planning first.”
“That’s probably the smartest thing you’ve ever said,” Alistair announced, greatly cheered by hearing negative things about Morrigan. “I agree absolutely.”
“The reason to worry about Shale is obvious since she killed her last master,” Angélique continued. “Dog already got tainted once and so who knows if that could happen again and he’d be a Blight Mabari.”
“I’ll give you Shale but Dog was cured of the taint and even if it happened again we’d be safe due to our Grey Warden immunity,” Alistair told her.
“Yeah, but that doesn’t mean he wouldn’t attack us or that anybody else would be safe from him,” Angélique replied. “And Wynne is perhaps the most concerning of all of our companions. I know that were I not such a generous and forgiving spirit that I would rather have ten…no, twenty! I would rather have twenty assassins hired by Loghain to kill us than her.”
Alistair frowned at her. He rather saw the elderly mage like a grandmother and didn’t appreciate this defamation of her character but
Angélique of all people. “Come now, what do you have against Wynne?”
Angélique blinked. “Nothing. Didn’t you hear me?”
Alistair sighed and wished that she wouldn’t be so infuriatingly literal at times. “If you did not have such a generous and forgiving spirit then what would you have against Wynne?” he tried again.
“She’s an abomination,” Angélique answered promptly.
Alistair choked. He had been expecting something more along the lines of ‘she won’t stop talking about things she knows nothing about’ or ‘she keeps trying to make me go back to the Circle even though she won’t do it’ which were Angélique’s usual complaints. “She is not!”
Angélique looked surprised. “Oh, she didn’t tell you?”
“Didn’t tell me what?” Alistair asked suspiciously.
“Wynne died right before we showed up at the Tower,” Angélique explained. “And a Fade spirit that had been stalking her decided to bring her back to life and is inside of her this very minute sustaining her. Sure, she’s not all melodramatic like Uldred or Connor were and hasn’t changed form but by the Chantry’s standards she’s still an abomination and who knows if we can trust her?”
“I agree,” Zevran spoke up. “That most definitely sounds like an abomination and I assure you both that I have never even considered getting possessed.”
“See?” Angélique asked brightly. “That already gives him an advantage over Wynne on the ‘will he snap and try to kill us’ scale.”
“I’m not sure that I agree with that,” Alistair said slowly. “She may fit the technical definition of an abomination, I guess, but she just seems so normal…and didn’t you say something about how you and I were also untrustworthy? How can you not trust me? Or especially yourself? We’re Grey Wardens and everyone knows that that makes us the epitome of trustworthiness.”
“We are Grey Wardens,” Angélique agreed. “And I’ll get back to that in a second. You were almost a Templar and have been subjected to about a decade of Chantry brainwashing while you were training and I’ve been living with them at the Tower for my entire life so neither of us is entirely rational, either.”
“We’re perfectly capable of thinking for ourselves!” Alistair argued. He paused. “Well, at least
I am…”
“Maybe that’s just what they
want you to think,” Angélique said knowingly. “And given that to become a Grey Warden you have to imbibe darkspawn blood and get exposed to it all at once-”
“Not in front of him!” Alistair hissed, glancing at Zevran.
“I’m sorry, did you say something?” Zevran asked politely. “I wasn’t listening.”
“That’s very courteous,” Angélique said with a warm smile at Zevran. “So as I was saying, we are Grey Wardens and that makes us basically high-functioning ghouls. If we’re
really going to hold Zevran’s past against him-”
“What past?” Alistair demanded. “He attacked us less than an hour ago!”
“Exactly,” Angélique said, nodding. “Bygones and whatnot. If we hold Zevran’s past against him then we’re going to start holding everything else against ourselves or risk being unbearable hypocrites and if we do that then we’ll be forced to concede that Loghain is right and we’re all too dangerous to be allowed to live. Do you want that?”
Alistair simply stared at her for a moment and wondered, as he had so many times before, whether she were for real. “You know what? Spare him if you want. I don’t even care at this point…”
Modifié par Sarah1281, 28 août 2010 - 01:23 .
Maybe next week.
Any form that strikes your fancy.
Retour en haut